absolutely everywhere, I don't know ever it's that the Serbian people are just more of the yes or the city has a hard time cleaning it up but yeah it's pretty prevalent so my first impressions when coming from Melbourne down to Belgrade it honestly looked a little bit ghetto looking from the start.
I noticed a lot of graffiti and as a city it's not as clean and polished as say Budapest, but as you'll find out throughout this text I really do like Belgrade so keep reading that is not where the story ends.
Another impression I have about Serbia in general and Belgrade it's, that this is probably the most liberal about smoking. It doesn't seem to be any laws about advertising of smoking and you can go to cafes and smoke, indoors or outdoors, it doesn't matter, you can buy cigarettes at every corner and it's very different for me coming from somewhere like Australia and even across all my travels I haven't seen a place so liberal about smoking. I don't really control smoking but if you're into that you know that might be something you like about Serbia.
Cost of living in Belgrade
Because we have no experience with renting in Serbia we have booked through Booking, we paid a thousand Australian dollars, all was up for a day which is pretty good considering this department. I've heard that if you lease or rent long term that this could be a lot less for the convenience of using Booking and all for all those other benefits we're happy to pay thousand AUD , but if you wanted to stay long-term in Serbia the rents would be much cheaper.
You can get a big Serbian burger from a local fast food chain for just a few US dollars or you can go big and go to a nice Japanese restaurant that we did on the top of the hotel and we paid six thousand six hundred dinner to that dinner that was probably the most expensive meal we had in Belgrade. For the most of the time we've been cooking at home, we didn't really see much difference between the local market and the student markets, but you want to eat out in Belgrade of course it can be quite cheap.
I also like to order in, while we were in Belgrade there is a service called dong seeds, where you can order delivery and oftentimes we didn't want to go outside we just order in, the delivery feeds are really inexpensive or free if you order a certain amount so you don't have to feel guilty about ordering in.
If you are feeling lazy and just want to stay in as four coffees you know I like to drink coffee every now and then like a lot of nomads. Belgrade is a really an expensive place to drink cappuccinos, my local place down the road I was paying 155 ghena per cappuccino that's probably on the lower end range of copies you can pay up to double that at a nicer cafe but it's never going to set you back probably more than five dollars.
We got our phone plan when we just arrived in Serbia it was very cheap we went with a service called VIP and it's basically a hundred dinner per gig so we got like we spent a thousand dinner and got like ten gigs of data and yet for that price you don't really have to worry about data and hell if you don't find Wi-Fi when you at a cafe or wherever you need to use the Internet data can be a good option as well we found it to be quite reliable and VIP apparently have a wide service covering so VIP is the company we went with and yet really inexpensive, really good quality.
For getting around, you should now that public transport isn't big in Belgrade, there was supposed to be a metro you might think and they've been talking about it for a long time, but they haven't been able to build one, but there's all these underground tunnels that you would think that the metro station under but no it's just it's just crossing between streets there are trends and there are buses we did take one trend.
Cheap option for getting around that super convenient is taking a taxi and we'd heard stories about you know taxi drivers kind of ripping off tourists so we decided to go with an app called taxa five which we discovered in Budapest, but it's really big in Belgrade as well and it's basically just like uber but for booking taxis and you even pay in cash or pay with the app. Otherwise if you just want to walk around, Belgrade has been great for that, I love being able to just walk everywhere around Belgrade.
Belgrade is not a very bicycle friendly place so walking is great and taxis are great and the occasional public transport is your best ways of getting around
I've heard that Belgrade has a crazy nightlife scene I'm not much of a nightlife guy myself unfortunately so I didn't go a bar or nightclub while I was here, but I did have the occasional beer and just hang out at home so that is crazy cheap especially for somebody like me from Australia we have some crazy alcohol prices but, in Belgrade you can get beer for really cheap like each grab a beer so less than a dollar, here it's it's crazy if you just want to grab a beer and go home and have a drink the current exchange rate is about 110 Xena to a US dollar sir pretty much all of these beers above that one under a US dollar each we got your bottles down here it's about 50 cents for a bottle of beer then and if you like buying in bulk you've got more than a leader for just under $2 liters the gyms and fitness.
Google Maps wasn't too reliable for finding a gym in Belgrade but I did find one called I am Republic and it was a really good gym I think I paid 2,700 dinner, I think and I'm not sure what it is per day but that was a fully equipped gym I was able to do all the necessarily necessary steps in my workout there and yeah it was a really good gym.
What about cafes and co-working in Belgrade?
It's not hard to find a co-working space at all, I checked out smart offers in center and impact hub so smart office is the first co-working space in Belgrade it's really in the center of the city near, knez mihailova CH is the main street in center is another one that's pretty close to it but that one is a little bit smaller and when I went to talk to them they said I have one desk left so I think it's more of a place for permanent people not very transient kind of digital nomads as you probably would expect from a big city impact hub has different packages for how many hours you want to get but to get signed up you need to sign up for minimum three months on the connect package so I was only staying for a month so if I was going to work out any of them I probably choose impact hub but that whole having to sign up for three months and it wasn't too inexpensive with the the hours so I decided just to work from home the internet was good here and I'm comfortable so just working from home was fine for me.
First recommendation was from my friends search I went to a place called 19 grand the Internet just keep kept coming out but it was okay I guess I didn't think it was that great but it's one of the surgeons favorite spots to work in Belgrade when he comes here and the other spot I went to a VA to coffee Explorer was recommended by Maria from them at capitalists and it had surprisingly fast and good internet reliable and she works out of there most of the week so she can attest that it's um a good space to work out of it apart from that there doesn't seem to be many other cafes that are you know really cater to digital nomads but from my conversations with Marina and Serge it seems like there are a lot of cafes that you can work from in Belgrade and it's not too unusual to you know go to a cafe with conceding and just you know do some work on your computer.
Belgrade Lifestyle
Denise and I saw st. Sava temple which is a large Botha Dobbs church that is pretty famous and while we were there they were constructing reconstructing or doing some renovations on the inside but you can go down to the Crypt and see some incredible artwork down there, there's also the Belgrade fortress and the path that surrounds it that was interesting we took a cheap little land train around sort of carriage and all you call it around the park and that was a good way to see the fortress and the surrounding park and get some views along the river those are probably two of the biggest sites that you would want to see kind of as a tourist in Belgrade.
Two cool areas that we like to check out and hang out in in Belgrade of course is Kanab mahalia, it's a large walking street in center of Belgrade and it has different streets which intersect with it and it's just a walking mall on so there's shopping, there's Zara and you know you can buy ice cream and popcorn there and yeah just hang out go shopping there's also a place called CSKA Dalia I don't know if I'm pronouncing that one correctly Eva but that's the Bohemian area of Belgrade and you can it's basically a cobblestone walking street and it was a bit dead when we went there during the day but at night it comes alive people having dinner and musicians.
From my personal standpoint there's nothing bad about Belgrade and there's nothing too amazing about it but what I like about Serbia in general is that the Serbian people and the culture the laid-back culture is very nice to be around at least for me. I've had really good experience with the Serbian people they've been very helpful very very times and very relaxed kind of people and that of course comes across in their cafe culture. One of the things that you know I enjoy doing here in Belgrade was just chilling out of the cafe and grabbing a coffee and yeah just taking in the chilled vibes of Belgrade.
Schengen zone
I'd talk a little bit about the visa situation in Serbia and one of the things that attracted us to Belgrade was that Belgrade interview outside the Schengen zone and for those of you who don't know what the Schengen zone is it's basically a collection of European countries that share the same visa rules and basically if you travel to the Schengen zone it's like spending time in one country and you only get 90 days out of 180 in that zone as an Australian as an American and a lot of other nationalities.
If you're an EU citizen you have no worries whatsoever but for us we wanted to spend longer in Europe than 90 days so Serbia was a good option for us and they have the same rule as well 90 days out of 180 for Australians and Americans and those sort of countries but it's just Serbia so you can spend 90 days in Serbia theoretically and 90 days in the Schengen zone and in 90 days in another Eastern European country it's not counted towards your shaking time.
I visited some gorgeous before we came to Belgrade and Samba is a great up-and-coming northern Serbia in town which we recommend and if you want to stay in some boar there's a co-working space then called fabrica opened by our friend Serge that I highly recommend also I checked out a space called ma Curran house on the other side of northern Serbia and this is a basically co living co-working space so basically this compound set up for digital nomads to create the ideal productivity environment and you get three meals a day there and everything's just taken care of for you so that you can work.
The city is incredible value for money. I mean it's not ridiculously cheap like some places in Southeast Asia like Chiang Mai, but to live in the middle of the city and to be able to walk everywhere and eat out and the internet is great here I think it's an underrated city and I'm sure that you'll see X number of nomads come here as the movement grows so as always.
Thanks so much for reading my story, and don't forget to Travel!
Comments
Post a Comment